American Youth Policy Forum
Contact Information
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Betsy Brand, Director |
Description of Organization |
The American Youth Policy Forum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan professional development organization based in Washington, DC, provides learning opportunities for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers working on youth and education issues at the national, state, and local levels. AYPF’s goal is to enable participants to become more effective in the development, enactment, and implementation of sound policies affecting the nation’s young people by providing information, insights, and networks to better understand the development of healthy and successful young people, productive workers, and participating citizens in a democratic society. AYPF does not lobby or advocate for positions on pending legislation. Rather, we believe that greater intellectual and experiential knowledge of youth issues will lead to sounder, more informed policymaking. We strive to generate a climate of constructive action by enhancing communication, understanding, and trust among youth policy professionals. |
Dropout Recovery Related |
Re-engaging Disconnected Youth and Expanding Opportunities for High School: Professional Development for Local Leaders. AYPF, working with the National League of Cities, is planning a series of field trips to help local leaders learn more about reaching struggling students and out-of-school youth and expanding opportunities for high school-aged young people. This project, funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation supports the National League of Cities’ work engaging municipal leaders in building cross-system collaborations and implementing effective strategies to re-engage disconnected youth by providing hands-on professional development activities to mayors and superintendents, their staffs, and other local leaders engaged in efforts to reach young people who have dropped out of school, are out of work, or have been involved in the juvenile justice or foster care systems.
This project will offer local leaders an opportunity to participate in strategically designed and intensive field trips during which participants engage in substantive policy discussions with their counterparts in other cities and visit exemplary programs. Whatever It Takes: How Twelve Communities Are Reconnecting Out-Of-School Youth documents what committed educators, policymakers, and community leaders across the country are doing to reconnect out-of-school youth to the social and economic mainstream. Provides background on the serious high school dropout problem and describes in-depth what twelve communities are doing to reconnect dropouts to education and employment training. Includes descriptions of major national program models serving out-of-school youth. Federal, State, and Local Roles Supporting Alternative Education examines the roles that various levels of government play through legislation, policy, and other initiatives that support quality alternative education programs to reconnect youth to education and the workplace. It raises issues for policymakers at all levels to consider in facilitating the development of expanded alternative education pathways, which reduce the number of students dropping out of school and provide well-lit reentry points for those who leave school before obtaining a diploma. Every Nine Seconds a Student Becomes a Dropout provides statistics on the dropout problem and its consequences.
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